Boost your marketing with these tricks

A lot of businesses get a handle on the most popular social media platforms, like Facebook and Twitter, fairly quickly. You post meaningful, short posts or links to your content on your blog or website, add hashtags, engage in conversations with both current and prospective customers, and you’re likely to see an increase in followers and traffic back to your site. When it comes to the image-based social media platforms, though, you may not be sure how to begin – or if it’s worth the time and sometimes money spent for your business to have a presence there. Because each of the biggest three offer something unique, you’re bound to find at least one that proves worthwhile.

SnapChat

With photos sent between users, businesses might wonder where they stand to connect with potential customers on SnapChat. However, there are a number of innovative ways to sponsor advertisements on the platform that will pay off effectively. Digital Current explains how advertisers can take advantage of SnapChat with strategies such as geofilters, which allows SnapChat users to overlay a well-design advertising filter over their own images they take with the app. Tie the geofilter into a special occasion or holiday to boost its appeal over a limited period.

Instagram

Instagram is especially important for businesses targeting a younger adult demographic. The Pew Internet Research Center reports that 55 percent of Instagram users are between the ages of 18 and 29. Your business can create an account to post both candid and professional photos reflective of your work atmosphere, products and services. Put some care into the images so they look nicely staged, but don’t only post professionally-taken product photos or your account will look like a catalog or spam. Include photos of customers using your products (with their permission) and make ample use of hashtags to reach people interested in what it is you have to sell.

Pinterest

Pinterest is popular primarily with women, which can prove a plus to companies whose products and services are targeted largely at women. It’s a site mostly comprised of “pinned” images from around the web, although businesses should be careful not to follow suit exactly and pin any lovely image they find online. Copyright holders of images can sue anyone online for using them, and businesses make a more attractive target for lawsuits than individuals. Instead, pin your own images – from your website and from photo sessions – for which you hold the copyright. Categorize them with relevant keywords to make it easier for people interested in your products and services to find them.

Experiment with two or more image-based social media accounts for your website and pay attention to the levels of engagement for the first few months. If, after six months or so, you decide that one or more of them are not leading to enough engagement or website traffic, cease your efforts at the site or even consider deleting the account entirely. When it comes to social media, there are so many platforms to choose from and not enough time to devote to all platforms equally, so it makes sense to focus on the ones that prove the most worthwhile.

There are countless ways to market web content- targeted SEO campaigns, link building arrangements and keyword integration, to name a few. However, promoting your content on social media outlets can prove every bit as effective as the aforementioned marketing practices. Not only is social media promotion highly cost-effective, it’s also incredibly easy and won’t eat up much of your time. The following tips will help your company get the most out of its social media marketing endeavors.

Take Time Zones into Consideration

When promoting content on a popular social networking site like Facebook or Twitter, there’s no guarantee that every one of your followers is going to see every one of your posts. In fact, the more followers you have, the less likely it is that your posts will be seen by everyone. However, by posting multiple times, you can effectively increase the number of people that see your updates. It’s important to take time zones into account before posting a promotional tweet or Facebook update. For best results, make four different promotional posts – one for each major time zone – whenever a new piece of content appears on your site. If a substantial number of your followers reside in Hawaii or Alaska, it may be in your best interest to make posts for the lesser-known Hawaii-Aleutian and Alaskan time zones. This isn’t to say you should make the exact same post four to six times. In order to avoid giving off the impression of laziness, take care to change up your language in each post – even if they’re all promoting the same piece of content. As Entrepreneur confirms, there’s nothing wrong with promoting the same thing multiple times, provided each post isn’t a carbon copy of the original update.

Don’t Forget the Images

It’s no secret that people typically respond better to images than text. A text-only post isn’t likely to catch the eye of someone who’s scrolling through a congested Facebook wall or Twitter feed. In order to grab your followers’ attention, you’ll need to include a colorful image in each one of your promotional posts. Ideally, this image should be of some relevance to the piece of content you’re promoting. High-quality stock images can often grab people’s attention, but if you have any skilled graphic designers on staff, consider having them whip something up each time you have a piece of content to promote.

Encourage Shares

When it comes to social media promotion, the more shares your posts receive, the better. This is why you should actively encourage followers to share and retweet every one of your promotional posts. The more shares you receive, the more people are made aware of your business and its web content. Shares and retweets are how follower bases expand, so remember to emphasize their importance when addressing your followers.

Stepping up your game on social media is a great way to increase the audience for your company’s web content. Posting for multiple time zones, adorning your posts with colorful imagery and actively encouraging shares are all conducive to heightened visitor numbers and informed followers.

It’s important that your company’s web content be seen by as many people as possible. Every person who checks out the blog posts, videos and image collections on your business’s website represents a prospective client – and if they’re unimpressed with what they see, chances are they won’t become paying customers. Many companies make the mistake of targeting their content to a very specific customer base. While this is fine for businesses aiming for niche markets, companies interested in mass appeal stand to benefit from the following tips.

Learn from Your Top Competitors

Research is crucial to broadening the appeal of your web content. When scouring the web for helpful research subjects, look no further than your most successful competitors. If their websites – and web content – are more successful at drumming up consumer interest than yours, carefully study their promotional videos, blog posts and articles. Keep an eye out for things they share in common – i.e., structure type, narrative voice, flashy visuals, etc. Of course, this isn’t to say that your company should engage in plagiarism or shallowly mimic the content produced by your chief competitors. Rather, you should closely compare their content to yours and work towards accentuating any mutual strong points.

Include Helpful Info-Graphics

Appealing to a mass audience can be difficult for people who work in complex or highly specialized fields. While people who are familiar with your industry are sure to eat up in-depth think pieces and feature articles, the uninitiated are liable to be left scratching their heads. If you’re looking for an effective way to combat confusion on the part of newcomers, appeal to their love of visual learning. Seeing a complex concept explained in writing simply isn’t enough for many people. Even a talented wordsmith needs help from the occasional visual aid, particularly when trying to heighten an audience’s understanding of complicated subject matter. The exact info-graphics you should use vary depending on what’s being explained, but easy-to-read charts and graphs can effectively highlight the most important points you wish to convey. If you’re not confident in your ability to create these aids, entrust the task to a team member with a knack for graphic design.

Research Keywords

Nearly every company that produces web content uses keyword integration to some extent. As it the case with most methods of search engine optimization, success rates tend to vary. In many cases, a lack of success with keyword integration stems from a lack of research. Fortunately, researching the most effective keywords for your industry is neither difficult nor time-consuming. To start, enter any keywords you’re thinking about using into Google and its contemporaries and determine how effective they are at producing relevant results. If results are plentiful and/or you spot a number of search ads in the vicinity of the results, you’re likely dealing with a highly-valued keyword or set of keywords. As Moz explains, buying a sample campaign for specific keywords with Google AdWords or Bing Adcenter is another easy way to determine their effectiveness.

If an expanded audience is what you’re after, skillfully-produced web content is a great way to get it. Tailoring your content to appeal to a broader consumer base requires a fair amount of effort, but as you’ll find, the payoff is well worth the work. Putting your research and graphic design skills to good use can lead to dramatically improved content – and increased visitor numbers.

Most companies, even the ones with full-time social media specialists on staff, only have so much budget and time to devote to the business’ social media profiles. There are more social media platforms than you might think, and you certainly shouldn’t spread your company’s resources thin by trying to sign up for them all, as you can’t keep all of the accounts active. A few active, effective social media profiles are more beneficial to your company than a basic presence on countless platforms. Decide which platforms would work best for your company and devote your marketing efforts to them alone.

Examine Your Demographic

Once you have a clearer picture of your targeted demographic – the age, gender and location of your most fervent customers – you’ll be able to decide which social media platforms to focus on. For example, according to The Pew Research Center, while only 24 percent of the entire adult population is on Instagram, a full 55 percent of 18-29-year-olds are – and yet only four percent of those 65 and older are. If your customer base skews young, it makes sense to maintain a company Instagram account. On the other hand, if it primarily consists of senior citizens, it makes no sense at all to spend time on Instagram.

Rely on Some Staples

While there are many social media platforms to consider bypassing, the most popular ones are representative of many demographics and it simply makes sense to create accounts there regardless – or your customers will wonder why you don’t have an account. Facebook reports 1.5 billion monthly users, compared to 1 billion monthly users at YouTube, the second most popular social media site. Make company accounts on Facebook and Twitter to start, and if you intend to create a series of videos or you want a place to share your video advertisements, it’s worth getting a YouTube account as well. YouTube videos often place high on search engine results, so it does make sense to maintain a presence there, even if it doesn’t offer quite the same level of customer interaction as Facebook or Twitter.

Consider the Content of Your Posts

If, after you’ve created company social media profiles, you don’t notice the number of followers and level of engagement you’d hoped for, don’t delete the profiles just yet. Examine the content of your posts. If they seem like advertisements, people are going to dismiss them as spam. If they’re not making use of hashtags, they’re not reaching the maximum potential audience. If they don’t include video clips or images, they’re more likely to be overlooked. Tweak your posts to ask questions and encourage followers to repost and you should notice an increase in followers and engagement.

Hire a marketing firm to take care of your social media profiles for you if you don’t have the resources on hand to give them proper attention. Setting up a social media account is just the start. Someone needs to actively engage followers and post regularly on behalf of your business in order to get the most out of the social media platforms your company uses.

Content creation is something your company takes seriously. Each blog post, feature article and promotional video your team produces has to meet a rigorous set of standards. Considering how much time and effort is poured into creating such high-quality content, it’s only natural to want it to be seen by as wide an audience as possible. In order to bring this goal to fruition, you’ll need to stay up to date with the latest trends in content marketing. Like other forms of digital marketing, content marketing is anything but stationary. Given how rapidly content marketing trends shift, your team will need to stay on top of things in order to get their efforts noticed. Going into 2016, make sure to stay mindful of the following trends.

Longer-Form Content Will Help on the Google Front

In 2015, Google’s Knowledge Graph made a splash. Even though this tool was introduced all the way back in 2012, tweaks that have been made to it over the past year have facilitated its rise to prominence. These days, nearly every long-form and/or specialized search query generates a response from the Knowledge Graph. This means that if your content provides specific and knowledgeable answers to certain queries, it’s likely to receive attention from Google and be highlighted in the Knowledge Graph. Conversely, content that offers short, unhelpful or vague answers to queries is generally ignored by the aforementioned tool. In other words, longer-form content that’s written with authority will prove useful in eliciting recognition from the world’s most popular search engine.

Target Second-String Social Media Outlets

In the past, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube has effectively functioned as the “big three” with regard to content marketing – and in many respects, this is still the case. However, 2015 saw a rise in companies using second-string social media outlets like Instagram and Snapchat to expose a wider audience to their web content. So if you’ve distanced yourself from the aforementioned outlets or deemed them unworthy of your efforts, 2016 is the year to show them some love. This isn’t to say you should give them the same level of attention as their more successful contemporaries, but stepping up your game on Snapchat and Instagram is sure to serve you well in the New Year.

Episodic Content Can Reel in Repeat Visitors

Even in the age of binge-watching, episodic content holds a tremendous amount of sway with many consumers. With this in mind, encourage your team to start producing multiple-installment-based web content. If there’s a hard-hitting topic or news story that pertains to your specific industry – one that can’t be done justice in a single blog post or video – they should consider using it as the basis for an episodic string of content. According to Content Standard, after being reeled by an engaging premise, visitors will frequently check back for future installments and encourage their friends and family members to do the same on social media.

Getting your web content noticed by a large audience can be a sizable undertaking. With constant changes taking place on the content marketing front, it’s important that your company be open to revising its strategies as needed. Having your team stay current with the latest trends can go a long way in maximizing their content marketing efforts.

A website is only an effective marketing tool if it manages to attract as many visitors as possible – and convert those visitors into repeat visitors, customers and fans of what you have to offer. If you frequently see low traffic numbers, your first instinct might be to pay for more advertizing, and that can potentially help. However, the cause may be more substantial than that, and besides, with effective SEO, your website will do most of the marketing itself without you having to spend a fortune on ads.

Duplicate Content

Search engines don’t like when a website has exact wording that appears on other sites. Digital Current examines how to improve SEO for a business website and suggests rewriting product descriptions to avoid duplicate content penalties from search engines such as Google. In other words, retailers often rely on manufacturer-provided product descriptions and paste those exact words onto their site, not realizing that with dozens, hundreds or even thousands of other retailers doing the same, search engines are more apt to push your website down the search engine results or eliminate it from the results entirely.

Create your own description and content at every opportunity. Sometimes it’s simply a matter of rewriting a product description or thinking about how you would personally give a sales pitch for buying an item or service. Other times, it’s a matter of not posting blog or article content from other websites. (Which can also lead to potential copyright problems regardless.) The one exception is occasional guest posts on your blog that have originally appeared on one other website and for which you get permission from the author and website owner to share.

Keyword Stuffing

In the early days of the search engine explosion, savvy website owners figured out that search engines were likely to show the sites that used keywords relevant to the search the most at the top of a search engine results page. For example, if someone typed, “buy new curtains,” the site that had posts constantly stating “buy new curtains” would be rewarded with a prime spot on the results page. However, search engines have since evolved after consumer complaints that the results were full of incomprehensible spam-like content.

Now, keywords are important, but so is not overusing them. When you choose the keywords most relevant to your industry, include them once in every post – twice at the most. Make sure the keywords fit naturally into the sentence, too, so a reader doesn’t get the impression that you’re keyword stuffing. In other words, “When looking to buy new curtains, you should…” instead of “People buy new curtains today, our curtains are great.”

Infrequent Updates

Social Media Marketing reports that blogs that update daily get five times as much traffic as blogs that don’t. If you put up an amazing website and then never update it except to post a few new products when they’re in stock, you’re not offering your visitors any reason to come back and you’re not going to get traffic. Update your blog at least once every three days, if not daily, for more opportunities to get new visitors and repeat traffic. Consider guest posts if you don’t think you have the means to update that often on your own.

Compelling content is key to seeing more visitors to your website, which is why it’s recommended that businesses keep a frequently updated blog, even if they don’t sell products online. The more often people visit your website, the more frequently your business will be on their minds. If you need assistance, hire a professional content production team to make sure your content is unique and SEO-optimized.

All things considered, your business’s forays into social media promotion have been fairly successful. Maintaining active accounts on social media staples like Facebook and Twitter has enabled you to connect with prospective customers and spread the word about your enterprise. However, despite your best efforts to be courteous and amenable, your accounts occasionally come under scrutiny from online ne’er-do-wells. Although the nature of these people’s grievances varies, they all share a common goal: to make your company look bad. Fortunately, there are numerous ways to deal with these individuals without losing your cool or making yourself appear petty.

Be Polite

Not all disgruntled commenters are necessarily trolls. A number of existing customers – and more importantly, prospective clients – are going to have queries and grievances that need to be addressed. In many cases, you can prevent run-of-the-mill patrons from turning into irate trolls by killing them with kindness. As Huff Post’s Andre Bourque explains, it simply doesn’t pay to stoop to their level. Even if their queries or remarks are dripping with irritation, thank them for their input and proceed to answer any questions they have in as courteous a manner as possible. In addition to diffusing a potentially dicey situation, taking this approach will show your social media followers how magnanimous and levelheaded you are, as well as how much you value the needs of customers.

Don’t Allow Yourself to Get Drawn into Arguments

Some people aren’t interested in having their queries addressed; they simply wish to bait you into arguments. Not only will this provide them with the negative attention they seek, it will make you appear immature and argumentative in the eyes of your social media followers. If it becomes clear that a certain commenter is determined to draw you into an argument, inform him or her that you will only continue this exchange via email or private message. If the offended party persists in pestering you, simply stop responding to their messages. In some cases, your followers may even chime in on your behalf, rendering any further responses from you unnecessary.

Report Habitually Combative Commenters

Nearly every popular social networking site has procedures in place for dealing with habitually combative commenters. Before reporting a certain user to a site’s security team, have a look at that site’s rules of conduct and make a note of any rules this person’s actions are violating. Consequences vary depending on the nature of the comments, as well as the frequency of the person’s offenses. However, they tend to run the gamut from “temporary account suspensions” to “full-on account deletions.”

Because of the high degree of anonymity the Internet offers, some people can’t resist the urge to act like jerks at every opportunity. Even in situations that don’t warrant aggression of any kind, certain individuals won’t hesitate to blow things wildly out of proportion. As long as the Worldwide Web exists, having to dealing with people like this is an unavoidable fact of life. That being the case, learning how to handle them will serve you well in all your social media endeavors.

No matter what your company sells, it makes sense to incorporate social media into your marketing platform. After all, Social Times reports 74 percent of Americans are influenced by social media when it comes to making purchases, so you’d be missing out on a large demographic if you ignored social media posting. However, it’s easy to be overwhelmed by the choices: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest and many more every year it seems. It’s enough to make you wonder if your company needs to hire someone in the marketing department whose full-time job it is to develop and maintain social media campaigns.

How Big Is Your Company?

The larger your business, the more resources you’ll have available to devote to marketing. If you can afford to have people in charge of social media on top of your general marketing efforts, then you should. Some very large companies can even create a subdivision of their marketing department and have multiple people in charge of social media.

However, although social media is a crucial part of most company’s marketing plans, it’s not the only part. Under no circumstances should you have only someone who focuses on social media and no one to concentrate on other methods of marketing, such as video development, TV, radio, print ads and community outreach. In that case, social media should only be a part of what the marketer does, even if it’s a large part.

What’s Your Target Demographic?

The younger your target demographic, the more likely it is to respond to social media. That’s not to say that older demographics won’t engage your business through social media, but it does make a difference as to whether or not it’s worthwhile for you to hire someone to work on social media full-time. It also affects your choice of social media platforms on which to focus. Even if you do hire a full-time social media marketer, that doesn’t mean he should sign your business up for every social media platform possible. Targeted, more interactive campaigns on the most popular social media platforms with your intended demographic are more effective than underwhelming campaigns spread across every social media platform possible.

Look at which platforms are specifically the most popular with your demographic as well. For example, Pinterest is popular with fashionistas, and Instagram is a hit with young adults. Middle-aged and older adults might prefer Facebook, and writers like Twitter.

How Effective Is the Person at Social Media?

Quiz your prospective social media marketing candidate on her strategies for social media. According to Marketing Tech Blog, for example, social media posts with images make up 75 percent of social media posts by companies. Does this person you’re considering making a full-time social media representative of your company know that? How will she incorporate images and video to make your business’ social media posts more interactive and effective? You should only create a full-time position for a social media marketer if you’re sure that person will bring something new to the table, something that your company can’t afford to pass up.

Whether or not it’s worth it to hire a full-time social marketer depends on the size of your company, your target demographic and your business’ goals. It’s also possible to outsource the job to a marketing company that specializes in social media. This is particularly useful if you’re a small operation or you run the business out of your home, as they’ll charge less than you’d have to pay for someone’s salary. Be sure to research the business and make sure they don’t simply bombard social media with boring, spam-like posts before you hire them.

Your company’s website features a wealth of entertaining, informative content. From blog posts to in-depth articles to professionally-produced videos, there’s no shortage of industry-centric content to be found on your site. Unfortunately, producing top-tier content doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to be noticed by the right people. If you’re tired of going the extra mile to create engaging content only to have your efforts go unnoticed, don’t lose heart. As it happens, there are several simple steps you can take to build your online audience and get your web content the recognition it deserves.

Link Building

Link building has remained one of the most popular forms of content marketing for over a decade – and for good reason! Not only is link building free, it’s very inexpensive – in some cases, even free. To get the ball rolling, create profiles for your company on small business directories like Angie’s List, Craig’s List and the Better Business Bureau’s website. Next, contact some of your colleagues in the industry to see if they’d be willing to host links to your site. Although it won’t have any effect on your Google rating, posting links to your content across various social media outlets is another effective way to drive new traffic to your website.

Guest Posts

The right guest post can attract scores of new visitors to your website. Adding to their convenience, guest posts work two ways: you can create them for other sites and feature them on your own site. For example, if there’s a popular company in your industry with whom you enjoy a friendly relationship, request the opportunity to create a guest post for their website. (It should go without saying, however, that this company should not be in direct competition with yours.) The only caveat attached to this arrangement is being allowed to include a link to your company’s website at the bottom of the post. Alternatively, if you’re interested in having guest posts created for your site, reach out to respected bloggers and popular figures within your industry. If all goes according to plan, this person’s name should attract the attention of search engines and generate a fair amount of social media buzz.

Image-Heavy Content

Getting prospective customers to your website is only half the battle. The real test of your mettle is whether or not you’ll be able to hold their interest. Within five seconds of visiting a new site, most people have made their decision about whether or not to stay. Additionally, with attention spans shorter than ever, fewer and fewer people are interested in reading huge text walls, regardless of how informative they may be. With that in mind, place a strong emphasis on image-centric content. As Forbes reports, image-heavy content makes it easier for consumers to digest information. To wit, your blog posts should be peppered with eye-catching images that provide readers with visual representations of the points you’re trying to make. Modern-day consumers are also drawn to short videos and info-graphics, so whenever possible, find a way to incorporate them into your content.

In some cases, finding the right audience for web content can prove even more difficult than creating content that’s worth reading and/or watching. Not surprisingly, a number of businesses quickly give up on producing regular content after their initial efforts prove unsuccessful. Fortunately, you can set your company apart from those quitters by putting the previously discussed tips into practice.

You’re very proud of the various pieces of content found on your company’s website. Informative, well-researched and professionally-written, your articles and blog posts do a great job of speaking to your established customer base. However, while your web traffic has remained steady, it’s been quite a while since your site experienced a substantial uptick in new visitors. This doesn’t necessarily reflect on the quality of your web content, but rather the content marketing strategies you have in place. Producing quality content and expecting interested parties to magically find it isn’t a solvent strategy. If you’re determined to find a broader audience, consider the following pointers.

Pay-Per-Click Marketing

It’s nearly impossible to overstate the effect popular search engines have on modern-day consumers. Many people look to Google and other search giants to guide their buying decisions, thus facilitating the need for your company to get noticed by them. One way to do this is bidding on popular keywords and phrases. Companies like Google and Yahoo! allows businesses to temporarily lease industry-centric search terms. This generally entails bidding against competitors on both a local and national level. Provided you submit the winning bid, a link to your business will be prominently displayed whenever someone enters the keywords you purchased. You’ll then be expected to pay the search engine’s parent company an agreed-upon sum each time someone clicks on the aforementioned link. Keep in mind, however, that this arrangement is by no means permanent. When the month is up, you’ll have to take part in another bidding war if you wish to hang onto the search terms you leased.

Website Marketing

In addition to using search engines to your advantage, look into leasing ad space on other websites. Depending on your industry, this can present a small challenge. The sites on which you advertise should pertain to your chosen field without offering customers anything in the way of direct competition. For example, if there’s an online publication that’s focused on your industry, look into their advertising rates. Conversely, the website of a company that offers the same products or services as your business may not be so keen on leasing you ad space. Some sites utilize the same pay-per-click arrangement you’ll find with search engines, while others allow you to purchase ad space for a flat monthly fee.

Content Tailoring

There are a number of strategies you can utilize to get your content noticed by popular search engines that don’t entail spending money. For starters, make an effort to incorporate industry-specific keywords and phrases into your articles, blog posts and headings. Secondly, post new content on a consistent basis. Google, in particular, keeps an eye out for regular updates when producing search results. As Entrepreneur’s Ann Handley reports, regular publishing is a staple of quality content production. Lastly, tying your content into hot news stories and current events can lead to heightened search engine recognition and increased web traffic.

In the digital age, content is king. With this in mind, it behooves businesses to produce videos, blog posts and image collections designed to inform and entertain their target audiences. However, creating worthwhile content is only half the battle. An above-average familiarity with content marketing is what will ultimately give you a leg up on the competition.